Let's figure out how much a single ticket to Crimea costs from Russian cities in 2019: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov and others.
A “single ticket” to Crimea is a special travel document that allows you to travel by train and bus to the resorts of Crimea.
"Single ticket":
- issued simultaneously with a long-distance train ticket to Anapa or Krasnodar or upon arrival at railway stations (if there are free seats on the buses, the sale ends 15 and 30 minutes before the bus departure, respectively);
- can be purchased both at railway ticket offices and on the Russian Railways website (two electronic tickets are purchased - for the train and for the bus). Tickets must be printed on paper or saved to your phone - they must be presented upon boarding.
- Special rates apply for “single tickets”.
In fact, a “single ticket” to Crimea only means the right to travel by bus, but many also mean travel by train. For convenience, we will also consider a “single ticket” as a travel document operating according to the “train + bus” scheme. Thus, the cost of a single ticket to Crimea is added up from the cost of a train ticket to Anapa or Krasnodar and the cost of a ticket to the resorts of Crimea.
from Anapa in 2019:
- Anapa - Kerch - 380 rubles;
- Anapa - Feodosia - 460 rubles;
- Anapa - Sudak - 540 rubles;
- Anapa - Simferopol - 590 rubles;
- Anapa - Sevastopol - 690 rubles;
- Anapa - Evpatoria - 690 rubles;
- Anapa - Yalta - 700 rubles.
Cost of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Krasnodar in 2019:
- Krasnodar - Kerch - rubles;
- Krasnodar - Feodosia - 590 rubles;
- Krasnodar - Simferopol - 710 rubles;
- Krasnodar - Sevastopol - 810 rubles;
- Krasnodar - Evpatoria - 810 rubles;
- Krasnodar - Yalta - 820 rubles.
(Photo © Yuriy Kuzin / flickr.com / License CC BY 2.0)
Below we will give the cost of a “single ticket” to Crimea from various Russian cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Saratov and so on. Ticket prices are one-way and valid for the 2019 tourist season.
How much does a “single ticket” to Crimea from Moscow cost?
The cost of reserved seat tickets for the train from Moscow to Anapa is from 2240 rubles, in a compartment - from 3539 rubles. There are up to eight trains per day. Tickets for a reserved seat from Moscow to Krasnodar can be purchased from 2,240 rubles, in a compartment - from 3,268 rubles. There are more trains to Krasnodar - up to 11 per day.
As mentioned above, the price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Moscow in 2019 consists of the cost of a train ticket to the Anapa or Krasnodar railway stations and the cost of bus travel to the required resort. For example, a “single ticket” from Moscow to Yalta, Evpatoria and Sevastopol (reserved seat) via Anapa will cost about 3 thousand rubles and more, from Moscow to Sudak - 2790 rubles, to Feodosia - 2700 rubles, to Kerch - 2620 rubles. Through Krasnodar - a little more expensive.
You can buy a “single ticket” to Crimea from Moscow on the Russian Railways website or at any railway ticket office.
Price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from St. Petersburg in 2019
You can buy a reserved seat ticket from St. Petersburg to Anapa for 2,700 rubles, a compartment costs more - from 7 thousand rubles. Getting to Krasnodar in a reserved seat costs 3,100 rubles or more, in a compartment - from 5,374 rubles.
The price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from St. Petersburg, for example, to Kerch (via Krasnodar, reserved seat) will be 3260 rubles, through Anapa to Sevastopol, Yalta and Evpatoria - about 3.5 thousand rubles, to Sudak - 3240 rubles, to Feodosia - 3160 rubles.
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Voronezh: price in 2019
You can buy a “single ticket” to Crimea (Sudak) from Voronezh for only 2,135 rubles. A train ticket to Anapa costs from 1,600 rubles (reserved seat), the cost of a compartment costs from 2,925 rubles. To get to Krasnodar in a reserved seat, you will have to pay about 1,400 rubles, in a compartment - over 2.5 thousand rubles.
The price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Voronezh (Sevastopol, Yalta and Evpatoria) in 2019 in a reserved seat is about 2,300 rubles, a ticket to Feodosia will cost 2,060 rubles, to Kerch - 1,960 rubles.
"Single ticket" to the Crimea from Nizhny Novgorod - 2019
A ticket in a reserved seat carriage to Anapa costs almost three thousand rubles, and in a compartment carriage it costs from 5.5 thousand rubles. It is a little cheaper to go to Krasnodar: in a reserved seat - from 2700 rubles, in a compartment - from 5 thousand rubles. The price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Nizhny Novgorod in 2019 is formed from the cost of a train ticket and a bus ticket. That is, a ticket, for example, to Evpatoria, Sevastopol and Yalta will cost about 3690 rubles, to Feodosia - 3460 rubles.
The price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Saratov in 2019
You can go from Saratov to Anapa for 2274 rubles, to Krasnodar - about 1900 rubles (reserved seat). In a compartment - about 3400 and 2800 respectively. The price of a "single ticket" to the Crimea from Saratov (for example, to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta, if you go on a reserved seat) is about 2974 rubles, a ticket to Feodosia will cost 2734 rubles, to Simferopol - 2864 rubles.
(Photo © mr. Wood / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Samara
A reserved seat ticket from Samara to Anapa costs from 2946 rubles, in a compartment - from 5.5 thousand rubles. A reserved seat to Krasnodar - from 2460 rubles, a coupe - from 4579 rubles. Thus, if you travel in a reserved seat car, a "single ticket" to the Crimea (to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta) from Samara will cost 3636 rubles, to Feodosia - 3406 rubles, to Simferopol - 3536 rubles, to Sudak - 3486 rubles, to Kerch with a transfer in Krasnodar - 3020 rubles.
"Single ticket" to the Crimea from Yekaterinburg
A reserved seat ticket from Yekaterinburg to Anapa costs from 4893 rubles, a ticket in a compartment - about 9300 rubles. A reserved seat ticket to Krasnodar costs 4484 rubles, in a compartment - 8542 rubles. When traveling in a reserved seat car, a “single ticket” to the Crimea from Yekaterinburg (to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta) will cost about 5600 rubles, to Feodosia - 5353 rubles, to Sudak - 5433 rubles.
From Rostov to Crimea: the price of a "single ticket" in 2019
A reserved seat ticket from Rostov to Anapa costs only 1080 rubles, a compartment ticket - from 1466 rubles. A ticket to Krasnodar in a reserved seat costs from 896 rubles, in a compartment - from 1328 rubles, seated - about 500 rubles.
The price in 2019 of a “single ticket” to the Crimea from Rostov in a reserved seat (to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta) is about 1,780 rubles, to Feodosia - 1,540 rubles, to Sudak - 1,620 rubles, to Kerch - 1,456 rubles.
"Single ticket" to the Crimea from Volgograd - 2019
A reserved seat ticket to Anapa - from 1737 rubles, in a compartment - from 3302 rubles. To Krasnodar in a reserved seat - from 1502 rubles, in a compartment - from 2.5 thousand rubles.
The price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Volgograd in 2019 is as follows: to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta in a reserved seat - about 2437 rubles, to Sudak - 2277 rubles, to Feodosia - 2197 rubles.
(Photo © Emyan / flickr.com / Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Novosibirsk
The cost of travel in a reserved seat to Anapa is from 5833 rubles, in a compartment - from 8970 rubles. Tickets for a reserved seat to Krasnodar will cost 5,765 rubles and more, for a compartment - from 8,683 rubles. The total price of a “single ticket” to Crimea from Novosibirsk is as follows: to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta in a reserved seat - 6533 rubles, to Feodosia - 6293 rubles, to Kerch - 6325 rubles, to Sudak - 6373 rubles.
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Kursk
A reserved seat ticket to Anapa will cost approximately 2,400 rubles, and a compartment ticket - 3.5 thousand. From Kursk to Krasnodar, travel in a reserved seat costs from 2092 rubles, in a compartment - from 2545 rubles. A “single ticket” to Crimea from Kursk (to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta) in a reserved seat will cost about 3,100 rubles, to Sudak - 2,940 rubles, to Feodosia - 2,860 rubles, to Kerch - 2,960 rubles.
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Chelyabinsk
From 3994 rubles - this is the price for a reserved seat ticket to Anapa, a compartment ticket - from 6100 rubles. Tickets to Krasnodar in a reserved seat cost from 3,750 rubles, in a compartment - from 5,700 rubles.
How much does a “single ticket” to Crimea from Chelyabinsk cost: to Kerch - 4310 rubles, to Sudak - 4534 rubles, to Feodosia - 4454 rubles, to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta - 4694 rubles.
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Omsk
A reserved seat ticket to Anapa costs 5,430 rubles and more, and a compartment ticket costs from 10,100 rubles. It’s a little cheaper to go to Krasnodar: a ticket for a reserved seat starts from 4,975 rubles, for a compartment - from 9.5 thousand. Thus, a “single ticket” to Crimea from Chelyabinsk in a reserved seat will cost about 6,130 rubles to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta, 5,970 rubles to Sudak, 5,890 to Feodosia, 5,535 rubles to Kerch.
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Kirov
A reserved seat ticket to Anapa will cost 3,748 rubles, a compartment ticket - 7,106 rubles. A reserved seat to Krasnodar costs 3,503 rubles, a coupe - 6,624 rubles. The price of a “single ticket” to Crimea to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta is 4448 rubles, to Sudak - 4288 rubles, to Feodosia - 4208 rubles, to Kerch - 4063 rubles.
“Single ticket” to Crimea from Bryansk
You can get from Bryansk to Anapa in a reserved seat for 2,706 rubles, in a compartment - 5,057 rubles. A reserved seat ticket to Krasnodar costs from 2,460 rubles, in a compartment - from 4,579 rubles. The cost of a “single ticket” to Crimea: to Sevastopol, Evpatoria and Yalta - 3406 rubles, to Sudak - 3246 rubles, to Feodosia - 3166 rubles, to Kerch - 3020 rubles.
Flights Moscow Simferopol: cost dynamics by month
The cost of a flight always depends on the time of travel. The chart will allow you to compare prices for air tickets from Moscow to Simferopol, track the dynamics of changes in their cost and find the best offer.
Statistics will help determine the season of low prices. For example, in July prices reach an average of 13,017 rubles, and in February the cost of tickets drops to an average of 6,214 rubles. Plan your trip now!
We analyze this information and create charts to make it easier for you to plan your trips.
During periods of high demand, it is recommended to purchase air tickets from Moscow to Simferopol in advance. For example, the number of searches in August peaks at 828,956 queries, and in February the number drops to 12 of the maximum.
Price depending on the number of days remaining before departure from Moscow to Simferopol
What is more profitable – to buy air tickets in advance, avoiding the general rush, or to take advantage of a “hot” offer closer to the departure date? The chart will help you determine the best time to purchase airline tickets.
See how the price of air tickets from Moscow to Simferopol changed depending on the time of purchase. Since the start of sales, their value has changed by an average of 17%. The minimum price for a flight from Moscow to Simferopol is 53 days before departure, approximately 8,438 rubles. The maximum price for a flight from Moscow to Simferopol is 37 days before departure, approximately 11,452 rubles. In most cases, early booking helps you save money, take advantage of it!
Dynamics of prices for plane tickets Moscow - Simferopol depending on the day of the week
The cost of air tickets from Moscow to Simferopol does not represent a fixed and constant amount. It depends on many factors, including the day of departure. The dynamics of changes are visible on the graph.
According to statistics, the most affordable option for flights from Moscow to Simferopol is on Tuesdays, their average cost is 10,536 rubles. The most expensive flights are on Saturdays, their average cost is 11,193 rubles. It is worth considering that flights on holidays are usually more expensive. We hope this information will help you plan your travels more effectively.
Direct trains from Moscow to Simferopol have been cancelled. As of 2018, the Crimean section of the route is served by buses. By 2019, it is planned to complete the construction of a railway bridge across the Kerch Strait.
Getting from Moscow to Simferopol by train, of course, takes longer than by plane. After several airlines launched low-cost direct flights from Moscow to Simferopol, one could forget about trains on this section of the route. However, if you are afraid of flying or just have a weakness for rail travel, it is still worth exploring this option in more detail. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the distance between Moscow and Simferopol for trains is 1,500 km, and the total time that will have to be spent on the road is about 1.5 days or more.
The train schedule Moscow - Simferopol is set at the end of April - for the entire summer season. At this time, the routes of the "Single Tickets" begin to operate, additional train runs are introduced and wagons are added to the existing trains.
Train schedule Moscow — Simferopol
In the absence of direct flights, we suggest considering the schedule of regular trains to resorts, from which the route can be continued along "". The “Single ticket” to Simferopol includes: transfer to the Krasnodar and Anapa station, subsequent bus ride along the Crimean bridge to Simferopol. First of all, you need to buy a train ticket to Krasnodar or Anapa.
Train Moscow - Simferopol (via Krasnodar)
The route offers several services per day; the summer schedule includes additional trains. Branded trains cover the way in an average of 19 hours, the rest of the trains travel much longer - from 27 to 34 hours.
The route is served by long-distance trains No. 083C, 110 M, 115A, 259A, 285A, 306 M, 377Ya, 471 M, 481Ya, 533 M, branded “Double-decker train” No. 104B, branded “Premium” No. 030S. Of course, not all flights are daily, but at the height of the summer season 5-10 trains depart along the route per day.
Train Moscow - Simferopol (via Anapa)
There are daily flights; in the summer, additional trains and carriages are introduced along the route. Travel time varies depending on the flight: from 23 hours to 1 day 11 hours.
Passenger transportation to Anapa is carried out by trains: No. 012 M, 110 M, 152 M, 156 M, 247A, 259A, 293A, 517 M. In summer, on average, you can count on 4-7 flights per day.
Ticket prices
The price of a ticket for the Moscow - Simferopol train consists of the cost of a trip from Moscow to Krasnodar/Anapa plus the cost of a “Single ticket” to Crimea (from Krasnodar - 710 rubles, from Anapa - 590 rubles).
Ticket price to Krasnodar in 2019: reserved seat from 2,800 rubles, coupe from 3,200 rubles.
Ticket price to Anapa in 2019: reserved seat from 2,700 rubles, coupe from 3,200 rubles, NE from 8,600 rubles.
To buy a ticket
You can also buy tickets for the Moscow – Simferopol train (on the route with all connections) on the Russian Railways website by selecting the desired dates and clicking “Routes with transfers” (otherwise the options will not be available).
If you don’t have the time or desire to register, then the easiest option is to use the services of a ticket sales service. The search form is shown below. You can get your boarding pass at the station ticket office, but trains on the Moscow-Simferopol route have electronic registration, so you don’t need to print anything out.
According to passenger reviews, purchasing tickets on the Tutu.ru website has a number of advantages:
- The site is easy to use, simple and accessible, the purchase form is easy to understand the first time;
- The process of purchasing a ticket takes only a few minutes and there is no need to go to the departure station and stand in line for a ticket;
- Possibility of choosing a carriage and seat;
- You can pay for your train ticket in cash or by credit card online;
- Cashback and promotional codes allow you to save on purchasing a ticket;
- Reliability: you receive confirmation of the purchase of an electronic train ticket by email or SMS, with an enclosed boarding coupon and many information links (for example, to your personal account), as well as technical support phone numbers. A few hours before departure, SMS reminders with detailed information about the trip (departure station, time, train number, carriage and seat) are sent to your specified phone number;
- After purchasing a ticket, the Tutu.ru service offers free coupons for discounts in various online stores.
Those reasonable people who use Telegram and subscribe to it know that I was in Crimea all last week. Moreover, they could regularly read travel notes and look at photographs from there. For those strange people who for some reason are still not on Telegram, I will now try to make some kind of brief summary. But, in general, you are in vain. Telegram is convenient.
Yes, I’ll say right away that I went there on business, so I didn’t set myself any tourist goals. I traveled by car, weekend there, week there, weekend back. However, some observations may be of interest to those who are considering Crimea as a vacation destination.
1. Road
I was traveling from Voronezh to Yalta (not to Yalta itself, to a village nearby, but this is not important). I drove through Timashevsk - this is not the most popular route; many people take a longer, but also more traveled route through Krasnodar. Perhaps in season it will be better - the road is wider. It’s not interesting to talk about the M4 – you stepped on the gas and are trying not to fall asleep. Well, except for Losev and a couple of interesting places where it suddenly turns from a six-row into a goat path. In the summer, people there die for hours in traffic jams, but in the off-season this is a slight annoying delay, nothing more. On the way, they collect money twice, but since I have a transponder in my car, I flew there twice and once back without the slightest delay. The last time I did hit a woodpecker who couldn't read in a Mercedes, who stared into the green corridor without a transponder, stood in front of the barrier and started bullying him. The barrier didn't care, but the rest had to wait until he stopped yelling at the piece of iron and drove out of there in reverse. A common occurrence in green corridors.
Some variety begins when you leave the M4.
When you turn right after Kushchevskaya towards Timashevsk, a fairly decent, but still two-lane road begins. This is quite survivable, as long as there are relatively few cars - well, you have to twitch, overtake trucks, but it's okay, that was the only way they drove before. I remember very well how the whole M4 looked much worse, it’s already “you-know-who brought the country to what”, that there is now a six-row. You go, of course, more slowly than on the federal highway, but around the beauty of the Kuban.
Sorry for the quality of the photos, my main smartphone worked all the way as a navigator and warning service (in the background under Yandex.Navigator). This is highly, highly recommended, because Kuban is simply littered with cameras.
However, it seems to me from road observations that in summer this road can turn into hell. Each narrowness will become a traffic jam for many hours. If now the journey to Timashevsk took 15 minutes, then it was, excuse me for a moment, a traffic jam of five cars. What if there are 50 of them?
2. Navigation
Yandex navigator communicates with itself in voice control mode. The word “kilometer” is the key word, and having said it, it switches to voice mode and waits for a command. He doesn’t understand what he hears, gets upset, asks again... So it’s better to turn off this mode right away. Despite the preloaded maps (some monstrous gigabytes), when the mobile connection goes out, he gets lost, sees neither himself nor the world around him, makes mistakes in routes, painfully tries to understand who he is, where he is, and what his place is in this Universe... K Fortunately, on the road to Crimea this rarely happens - the entire M4 is covered without interruptions, and in rich Kuban, unexpected LTE appeared here and there.
Beeline pleases. It’s just a pity that Crimea is not Russia for him...
But Megafon wanted money before reaching Rostov.
3. Kuban
In the Kuban live fat, fat. You drive through local villages and see all the “Great”, “Joyful”, “Abundant” and other positively self-satisfied place names. Not like we have in the Black Earth Region - Mud, Squabbles and the great village of KhrenOvoe. Well, that is, the locals, of course, assure that it is worthless, but let them fill it up for someone else. I could never understand what kind of toponymic masochism it is to live in some Drishcha or Shit. It’s better then “State Farm named after Lope De Vega” - at least it sounds like “fuck you.”
Already in the houses it is noticeable that toponymic sorcery has benefited the Kuban people - even in the smallest villages everything is well-kept, the houses are brick, the roofs are fashionable, the windows are plastic. Near every house there is a car, and most often not a Zhiguli. The presence of wealth among the peasants is easy to notice by the abundance of small decorations - beautiful fences, carved platbands, incredibly vulgar weathervanes... Well, yes, it’s kitschy, but positive, bright and, most importantly, indicative. Everything is normal for people, there is leisure and there are means.
The roads here, in the depths of the Kuban, are also not bad - markings, asphalt, gas stations. Two-row, but a decent two-row and there is where to overtake. True, Lukoil, the infection, hid all the gas stations! I was driving there - all Lukoil was on the left, through a continuous one without turns. I'm going back - the same garbage! How did he manage to rearrange all the gas stations on the other side of the road in a week? Some kind of vile sorcery, no less... But as soon as out of desperation you refuel at some “Rosneft” - and that’s it, Lukoils will nest like mushrooms, and everyone, as if mockingly, is on your side! By the way, Lukoil sells folding pocket axes. For little Raskolnikovs.
No, I have nothing against Rosneft, but when it comes to diesel fuel for Komonrail, I prefer Lukoil. It’s really painful, you know, injectors are expensive... Well, the best toilets along the whole road are at Lukoil. We recommend.
And yes, the Kuban lives fat. Against its background, the Voronezh region looks pale, and the steppe agricultural Crimea is a complete destitute. What can I say - here even candy cockerels grow the size of a palm! And it was I, I suppose, who plucked it unripe ...
3. Motel
There is a motel at the Olkhovsky state farm, which can be booked through booking and has free Wi-Fi in the rooms.
At the state farm, Carl!
But in Europe, sometimes even in an expensive hotel in the center of Vienna there is no Wi-Fi, just one socket in the wall, but if there is one, then by all means give a couple of euros for poverty. And the speed is crap, to be honest.
The motel cost one and a half thousand rubles for a double room with separate beds (I went with my daughter) and was in the “not rich, but clean” category.
The room has a shower, toilet and electric kettle - what else does a person need to spend the night on the road? The bed, however, is creaky as hell, and it’s better not to turn on the refrigerator - it rumbles like a diesel engine under power.
But the main thing is that the booking through booking worked in both directions. Civilization! I chose the motel based on the mileage - 800 km from Voronezh, 300 km to the ferry. It was just a convenient time - I arrived in the evening, spent the night, jumped on the ferry in the morning - and off to Crimea.
4. Ferry
Those who are smart and paid for the ferry online will not be pushed into the first drive. But there must be a paper printout. “I’ll show you on the smartphone screen” doesn’t work. (When I ordered the return trip, I had to look for a printer in Yalta). So you drive past the main line and feel like the trickiest one.
True, not for long. On the spit (after 10 km) there is a traffic police post, successfully creating a traffic jam out of the blue.
There they randomly check documents for the car and compulsory motor liability insurance. We went there - they checked, but back - no. But they stood in both cases.
Then turn to the second drive, the final one. In front of him is an inspection, like at customs - with passengers passing through frames, passing bags through an X-ray and examining a car with a mirror on the handle.
True, they let us through in both directions, looking very formally. Apparently because my daughter and I didn’t look like desperate suicide bombers who would gnaw through the bottom of the ferry to spite the Muscovites. Yes, you must have passports for adults and a child’s birth certificate.
In the last drive, cars are collected according to the number of seats on the ferry, lining them up in rows.
The ferry has a warm (air-conditioned in the summer) salon where they sell coffee and sandwiches, but you can also sit in the car if you want. And you can go out and take a picture of the sea and impudent seagulls.
Yes, everyone is trying to see the bridge under construction - but no, it is in a different place, it is not visible from the ferry.
The ferry goes quickly, literally half an hour, and unloading begins from the side opposite to loading, so it’s convenient to leave.
That's it, that's Crimea.
5. Crimea. Roads.
The road from Kerch to Yalta via Simferopol is terrible in some places, in others it’s already new - but everywhere there is one lane in each direction. Now, in the off-season, it can be overcome without much stress - well, it’s not fast, well, it’s shaking, well, the trucks are collecting their tails... But it’s scary to imagine what will happen in the summer, when thousands of vacationers rush onto this narrow path.
Gasoline and diesel fuel here +2 rubles to Voronezh, stable. There are widespread local networks, but Lukoil was also discovered hiding in the bushes from sanctions. My delicate common rail turbodiesel ate a whole tank of local diesel fuel and didn’t choke.
The roads around Yalta are such that two cars do not pass everywhere. Several times I had to back up along the almost vertical serpentines of village passages in order to let someone oncoming pass. There are constant traffic jams in Yalta, the center is also very narrow, traffic is intense, intersections are often unregulated and difficult to navigate. However, the people drive somehow more calmly than ours, they let you through with the secondary traffic, they let you turn around, they don’t honk heart-rendingly and don’t tear their hearts out.
Almost all parking in the center is paid (one hundred rubles) and even then you won’t find a free space. And this is March-April! It's scary to imagine what will happen in the summer.
6. Crimea. Realities.
You can tell a lot about Crimea, but all these impressions are chaotic and casual. First impression — zasrat to incredible. No, really, some garbage. Garbage, garbage, garbage.
Later I understood the reason - in our location, in order to take the garbage into the container, you had to carry bags up the stairs several kilometers up. About the same as the tenth floor without an elevator. We know that not everyone reports...
The public services here are pretty bad, but since the sanatoriums in the area have quietly become departmental under various Russian security forces, they are being intensively reconstructed and there is a chance that the surrounding area will be cleaned and garbage collection will be organized. I don’t know how to feel about this - on the one hand, with the fucked up people they all turned into ruins and heaps of shit, and on the other - why exactly and only departments?
The former Panina Palace, also known as the former Yasnaya Polyana children's sanatorium, now belongs to the Customs Service of the Russian Federation. This is their flag.
Off the coast, Miskhor Park has already been licked, cleaned and trimmed.
The first timid spring loot-suckers have already crawled out to bask in the sun, invitingly sparkling with bright tinsel. An obese tourist will soon, buzzing, fly in, like a bumblebee, carrying pollen on its paws ...
And you can’t say that a hellish srach is a hundred meters above and there is garbage under every bush. A tourist will be cut here soon! The tourist is gentle and timid. But in vain - you walk down the Alupka highway - on the left behind the FSB fence, on the right by the FSO. You go up - the FSO has fenced off a piece of Miskhor on the left, the FSB has occupied Chair Park on the right. You feel that your homeland is nearby!
A pleasant feeling of security, but not just security - state security!
It’s funny that under the Ukrainians, behind the same fences there were the same FSB and FSO, only Ukrainian. And under the USSR - Soviet. Most likely, even the same people were sitting in the same booths. They just changed the flags - and all the worries.
Governments come and go, but intelligence agencies remain. And Golden Lenin watches from the mountain with his watchful eye...
And everywhere there is the same portrait of the Darkest, with an unusually cunning expression on his face...
Another local problem is the rampant construction of high-rise buildings. Everywhere you look, some fresh concrete casting sticks out. Pandemic concrete casting. They are pushed onto every free patch of soil, which is why they sometimes have a rather bizarre shape. This developed under the Ukrainians, but the Russian administration is in no hurry to restore order. Of course, with the complete absence of roads and barely functioning communications, this turns into a real disaster, not to mention the fact that in some places there is almost nothing left of the relict parks.
Initially, Miskhor and Gaspra looked something like this - huts made from local cheap shell rock.
But then the Ukrainian oligarchs, the “new Ukrainians,” built palaces for themselves wherever there were enough square meters of flat space.
The remaining patches were divided by whoever could, sticking European sheds of bizarre shapes hanging over the slopes. Crimean architecture - when there is nowhere to build, but you really want to...
It seems that in a few years the entire coast will turn into a huge hive conglomerate, where the roof of one house will turn into the foundation of another.
So far there is no visible political will that should stop this, and the power pause is filled with solid real estate scammers. All posts and fences are covered with advertisements for extreme land surveying and uncompromising land allocation services.
But this is all, I tell you, complete bullshit against the backdrop of the greatness of nature. What the hell does it matter who once again re-privatized what was privatized or re-plundered the loot, when there are such mountains here? And what about the sea? And the air here is such that you can eat handfuls with both hands, stuffing into yourself this smell of everything in bloom, sweet to the point of stupefaction.
7. Crimea. Life
Crimea is partly stuck in the 90s. I haven’t seen such flea markets in the city center for a long time...
Meanwhile, the stores are full of products. The main producers are Voronezh, Kuban, Belarus. Prices are the same as ours.
In non-food items there is the same abundance and Voronezh is also present:
Well, the range of local wines defies any description at all...
Yes, the lights are turned off. A sign of the times – generators are everywhere.
We also felt like real Crimeans - we sat without light. Only two hours a day, a planned shutdown, but a very inconvenient time - at 20.30 to 22.30. Just when you need it. In addition, in our housing there, everything was electric - from heating to water supply. So I had to simply and without any fuss go to bed, without even drinking tea. Within a week we got involved, becoming avid early risers - since with the light the entire Internet, including mobile, disappeared, all that was left was to fight back at nine in the evening.
What bothered me the most was the need to pay in cash everywhere; I usually use cards more. However, large stores are already starting to accept credit cards, I paid once.
Crimea even has its own Jean-Jacques, albeit without smoothies and meatballs:
So hipsters will find something to entertain themselves with...
Yalta onion - red and flat. We also sell it here, but it looks like the Chinese paint and flatten theirs. And Yalta is sweet...
Another interesting observation is that despite the underdevelopment and some clumsiness of the service, the level of friendliness here is unusually high. People don’t serve your number, but actually rush to help you, going beyond the scope of their official duties. So, for example, the parking attendant jumped out onto the roadway and stood with his arms outstretched across the traffic so that we could drive in the right direction (it was one way), supermarket workers were looking for wrapping paper for us to pack our glasses... And so on. No, nothing supernatural, but enough to pay attention to it.
8. Crimea. Internet.
By our standards, what is trying to pass itself off as “mobile Internet” does not even amount to mockery. One hundred kilobits with a tailwind, waving a mobile router from the balcony. Three G's? No, we haven't heard. But the edge is barely squeezed out.
It’s a little better in the center of Yalta, but it’s also not 4G even once.
It must be said that telegram is the last thing to give up when the connection is dead.
Two operators - MTS and TELE2 allow you to use the Internet in Crimea as if you were at home.
Beeline and Megafon, on the contrary, will take your shirt off your back, as if you were not in Russia, but in some Honduras.
Wired Internet, however, is available - a hundred megabit costs 440 rubles per month and was connected on the day of application (there were already wires in the apartment). Although to apply, I still had to lock myself in the center of Yalta, and there was no way to connect and pay in one day - first the Internet, then payment. Surprisingly, it's not the other way around. The inconvenience is that you cannot pay for internet here and check it in your personal account. The local service has not yet reached this point, although it would seem... The Internet is annoyingly unstable even on wires - it disappears every now and then in an unpredictable rhythm, it is extremely difficult to work. Everything is attributed to blackouts.
Yes, a very funny trick is to buy MTS SIM cards in Crimea. I don’t know how the locals get by here, but for tourists they sell MTS SIM cards of the Krasnodar Territory with the Super MTS tariff. That would be fine, but a call from such a tariff to Voronezh to any operator other than MTS costs an absurd 12 rubles per minute, which is more expensive than from Voronezh Beeline, which ignores the fact that Crimea is Russia and considers itself in international roaming.
But that's not the funniest part. The fact is that you cannot change the tariff on a purchased SIM card either through USSD or via LC, and you cannot transfer money recklessly thrown at it to another number, because, despite the “full registration with a passport”, the contract turns out to be not for you, but to a certain “legal entity”. In the personal account it is listed as “Dear subscriber”.
By the way, they offer to buy the same SIM card without registration, but for a hundred rubles more, although in both cases it turns out not to be for you. In general, life is bad without a sucker.
I don’t know if there are MTS SIM cards with other tariffs (I didn’t buy this one). But, in any case, most likely they will be issued through the same ass, because MTS pretends that it’s not here, and it’s as if it’s not them at all, but as if it’s real roaming. In general, the most correct way of mobile communication in Crimea is to buy an MTS SIM card with a tariff from Smart to Smart+ in your home region. This is the cheapest way to call home from Crimea.
I also came under international sanctions - in Crimea I was unable to update my smartphone applications via GooglePlay. In general, I don’t care, I try to update them less often so as not to pollute my memory. I just found out that the new Yandex maps have switched from raster to vector and decided to see what it looks like.
However, this probably causes some inconvenience for local Android users. Yes, almost everything can be found and installed bypassing Google Play, or using a VPN, but these are unnecessary gestures. It's funny that the iPad was updated without problems.
Just out of sport, I installed the ZenMate VPN service (where you can frolic up to 500 MB for free), changed the country to the USA, and everything was installed.
I can’t yet say that Yandex maps have become fundamentally better with the transition to vector, but download volumes have definitely become smaller.
But I’m not very happy with Yandex.Navigator, which was in charge on this trip - it always tried to lead me into some gloomy ridges (wide straight roads are not for him, he loves to take shortcuts through some courtyards) and , when the rotten local mobile Internet disappeared, I forgot who he was and where he was. There is no warning about cameras at all, the service is completely crude - it starts yelling “camera!” when it has already been passed for a long time. But, in general, I have never gotten lost anywhere, just a few times, no more.
8. Conclusions.
I don’t know what to write here... Well, oh well:
1. Go to Crimea by car in off-season simple, fast and inexpensive. Especially compared to other methods. In the summer, I suspect it will be much worse, but I still plan to go around in June with the goal of bathing the children in the surf. Yes, it will be a bit difficult by car, but it’s 15-20 thousand for a round trip for four, and by plane on a direct flight – 80 thousand, via Moscow – 40 thousand, but with a connection at 15 hours. There is something to suffer for. (Perhaps in the summer there will be cheaper direct flights from low-cost airlines, but they cannot be booked for now).
2. Living (in the sense of eating) in Crimea in the off-season is no more expensive than in Voronezh (minus housing), I think that this will not change during the season.
3. Overall, I liked Crimea, despite some things that annoy me. But such things are everywhere. I hope there will be fewer of them.
4. I consider any discussions about politics in the comments to be extremely inappropriate; I will answer everyday questions - but don’t expect much, I was there for a short time, saw little and was very busy with the business for which I came.
5. Switch to Telegram, I will increasingly move there from other public pages. This, as it turned out, saves a lot of time, which I now have a desperate shortage of. A publication on FB or LiveJournal eats up the rest of the day with comments and discussions, but in a telegram I post it and forget it. Beauty!
The increased popularity of Crimea has a downside for vacationers: cheap plane tickets run out long before most citizens have time to plan their vacation. Due to the impossibility of rail transit through the territory of Ukraine, a car becomes an alternative to an airplane.
There
A trip to Crimea in a regular B/C-class car is quite accessible to any normal driver; the question is in planning the route and rest. It is ideal if there are two drivers in the car: this makes the journey much easier. In addition, it will be facilitated by all sorts of pleasant little things, such as a cooler bag with a small supply of food, a smartphone with a program that monitors traffic cameras, and a T-pass transponder, which allows you to pass through toll booths on the highway with minimal delays.
But if you can do without the above, then it’s better not to do without ferry tickets across the Kerch Strait, which can be purchased on the website Gosparom.ru: buying tickets on the spot will seriously increase the waiting time, since tickets are sold for certain time slots. As practice shows, the optimal period for those traveling from Moscow is from 15:00 to 21:00 on the day following departure.
With this set (except for the transponder, which was forgotten), the Lenta.ru correspondent and his family set off on the morning of July 16 from the near Moscow region, arriving at the intersection of the Moscow Ring Road and the M4 highway at approximately 5:30. This made it possible to skip the payment points closest to Moscow practically without queues, even despite the absence of a transponder, but the queues in the Tula and Voronezh regions increased the travel time by about an hour.
The route ran along the M4 through Voronezh to Rostov-on-Don, which was the main goal of the first day of the journey - we booked a motel for the night in Bataysk, the nearest suburb of Rostov. If we had been able to travel further on the first day, Timashevsk in the Krasnodar Territory was a backup option for overnight accommodation, but it was not possible to complete the maximum program.
The main obstacle was traffic jams in the Voronezh region, which appeared shortly before Losevo and continued intermittently almost to Boguchar on sections of the route that had not yet been expanded (or were only being expanded). It is quite possible to bypass some of these traffic jams along regional roads through Bobrov and Buturlinovka - regional roads in the Voronezh region are much better than in the Moscow region, but this is everyone’s personal choice, and it is not a fact that in the end it will be possible to save time.
We didn’t succeed, although we drove longer than we stood, and in the end we got to Bataysk at three o’clock in the morning - more than 21 hours after departure, which was scheduled, perhaps, too late. It should be understood that participants in traffic jams, a very significant proportion of which are cars of tourists from the central regions of Russia, start at approximately the same time, and if you start at least forty minutes earlier and maintain this gap along the way, then stand in the Voronezh region in the afternoon you will have to do much less. It’s not worth driving without stopping - other road users also need refueling, rest, and a lunch break, so there’s simply no point in performing feats on the highway.
The second day was much simpler: we left Bataysk at nine in the morning and laid out a route not along the main route through Krasnodar, but through the villages, closer to the coast of the Azov Sea. Without much haste, we arrived at the port of Kavkaz at 16:30. Electronic tickets were a big help here, thanks to which we got on the ferry, despite the busy parking lot, within an hour and a half. Those who bought tickets on the spot were not always lucky; some left for the other side only at ten o’clock in the evening.
The ferry, however, that day was not particularly hasty: before setting off, we spent almost an hour looking for “hares” on board, having discovered a discrepancy between the number of tickets handed over and passengers boarding, so from the port of Crimea on the western shore of the Kerch Strait we I managed to leave only around eight in the evening.
Roads of Crimea
They are different. But the Kerch-Feodosia highway in some places can scare even residents of provincial towns and villages in the Tver and Moscow regions, and it’s difficult to say how the Kuban residents with their almost ideal highways feel on it. In the Feodosia area, traffic is at a standstill due to repairs. You can trust a navigator that suggests a detour north of the main road, but be careful. If you have a four-wheel drive vehicle, driving along the dirt road along the Kerch-Dzhankoy railway line and the North Crimean Canal will be just an interesting adventure. However, the VW Jetta turned out to be stronger than expected and survived the “washboard” of the primer without loss. The reward was unexpected encounters on a half-abandoned road at night with local wildlife - from kittens and puppies to owls and hedgehogs, and picturesque ruins on the sides. A touch of surprise was added by an old MAZ hay truck floating in thick dust and tongues of fog without rear lights - the sudden appearance of this road ghost in the headlights added adrenaline.
We returned back to the Feodosia-Simferopol highway through Zhuravki and Pervomaiskoe near Stary Krym and without incident reached our destination, which in our case was Kacha.
A trip by car to Crimea itself provides an additional bonus in the form of increased mobility on the spot: you won’t have to spend money on a taxi. We took full advantage of this bonus, covering about 1,200 kilometers in 14 days of rest - from “five-minute” trips to the local market to a trip covering most of the resort area of Crimea - first east through Simferopol to Morskoye, overcoming the famous Belogorsk - Privetnoye highway with a fair piece of mountain dirt road, and then back to the west along the South Coast, with a visit to the Nikitsky Botanical Garden near Yalta and Sevastopol.
These days, Dmitry Medvedev visited Crimea, and it was reported that the prime minister specifically planned to discuss local road problems. There are definitely problems. Some sections look as if they have not been repaired since the times when the Crimean roads were sabotaged by the German commander Manstein, and in others the covering from the time of Emperor Trajan was clearly removed by Mamai during the retreat to Feodosia after the defeat from Dmitry Donskoy. However, work is underway: many sections became better in the short time that we were on the peninsula.
Back
The return journey, for which we also acquired ferry tickets in advance, this time for the segment 11-17:00, taking into account the shorter road to the strait from Kachi than from Rostov, turned out to be much easier. Starting at five in the morning from Kachi allowed us to skip the Feodosia section before a traffic jam formed in the easterly direction and be in the port of Crimea by 10 o’clock in the morning. The counter flow from the peninsula to Taman is still much less “full-flowing”: until mid-August, people mostly go to the peninsula and not back, so we found ourselves in the port of Kavkaz within an hour, and by seven o’clock in the evening we reached Bataysk the same way as on the way “there”.
What not to do
Drive. Leaving aside the argument that violating traffic rules is bad, it is simply a) expensive - there are quite a lot of cameras, b) ineffective - often those of the cars flying along the highway at a speed of 140-150 that were more noticeable were discovered a few hours later nearby, in the same traffic jam - short speed segments do not work well over a long distance, c) dangerous. Road accidents were more common than we would like, including two fatal ones on the way back.
What to do
Enjoy. To Crimea by car - this is an adventure from childhood. The opportunity to quickly get to interesting places on your own - and there are dozens and hundreds of them away from the main transport arteries of the peninsula - is worth taking advantage of. Have a nice rest!
